How To Fit Your Holiday In A Backpack

By Paul Woollacombe
26 Jun, 2013, 13:21

It’s all well and good jetting off on an overseas adventure, but if you can’t have everything you need to make your holiday complete by your side, you run the risk of ruining that dream trip. Packing all the essentials can prove to be far harder for some than others – don’t be insulted if that includes you, they do say that geniuses are disorganised!

By taking the following simple steps you can all but eradicate the fear of a bag-packing disaster and ensure that your holiday is fully catered for:

Weapon of choice – Before you go anywhere, it’s time to pick the right bag. The choice you make should be motivated primarily by the question “Where do I need to take my belongings?” If you’re heading for a city break where you’ll be getting a taxi straight from the airport to the hotel, a stylish suitcase or hold-all will do nicely, whereas those eyeing up something more adventurous like an inter-railing tour of Europe or a trekking holiday should look for a highly durable, ergonomically designed and easily portable backpack – check out Amazon’s best-sellers for some widely praised picks of the bunch. Quality tour operators like www.monarch.co.uk are generally on hand to offer advice about how to pick the right luggage to fit your holiday.

Should it stay or should it go? – It’s the big question that’s foxed holiday-makers for generations – “What exactly do I need to take with me?” The rough answer is that this is generally a personal matter which also depends to a great extent on your chosen destination and itinerary, but there are a couple of handy questions and considerations to run through which could help you lighten the load before you’ve even started packing.

Firstly, ask yourself whether or not there are some items you could just buy when you get there. Extra food supplies, toiletries and basic items of clothing are all cheaply and widely available in the vast majority of established tourist destinations in the developed world, so more often than not there’s really no need to pack such things. Another space saver can be getting rid of guide books and language guides. We live in an age of smartphones, in which practically all that is known to humanity exists somewhere on the internet. Temporarily upgrading your phone’s service plan to include your travel destination(s) of choice may seem a costly measure at first glance, but guide books can be pricey too, and this option opens up all manner of useful tools to make your holiday complete, from Google Maps services to foreign language apps and more.